The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Sun 3/15/2009)

[RetroLounge]

Good Friday Kiss

The choir door left open, we slithered in.
Moving through the musky stacks
of bibles and unlaundered cassocks
we lay down behind the altar—
our bodies an awkward tangle on polished wood,
a snake with clothes on,
when he pulled me close, whispering his love.
Still, it wasn’t the airless sanctuary
or the dead I could hear humming
inside the church’s empty pews.
No, it was Adam’s hands that made me cringe
the first time his lips touched mine—
twelve years old and asthma sickly,
the dry, scabbed flesh and little cloth gloves
he wore to cover pink ointments
that oozed in a line down his wrists.
I looked up and saw the cross floating overhead,
draped in black chiffon for today’s Good Friday
like a negligee or widow’s grieving veil,
and suddenly revolted by the cotton-coated touch
of his fingers brushing my cheek,
I rolled away from him, forever.
What did I know of suffering? The flesh
pulled taut and stapled, the human canvas
rubbed to transparency?
How my taunts would come to crucify this boy,
my young heart shifting in gusts
so fast from like to loathe—
the art of betrayal I was already learning to perfect.

Michelle Bitting

**************



Michelle grew up in Los Angeles near the ocean. A fourth generation Angeleno, she wrote poems in college at U.C. Berkeley where she studied theatre. She enjoyed careers as a dancer and a chef before marrying Phil Abrams, the actor, and giving birth to their two beautiful children. In 2001 she began writing and publishing in earnest often scribbling poems in parking lots while she waited for her eldest to finish school, her youngest asleep in the backseat. In addition to years of dance, music, and culinary arts training, Michelle has worked part-time since 1998 in the toddler and preschool programs at a local parochial school in Pacific Palisades. Last year she was awarded a grant to collaborate with the non-profit CDI (California Dance Institute) implementing a poetry component to their LAUSD inner city middle school performing arts program. Michelle has been involved in hands-on outreach to the sick, hungry, and homeless for over a decade. To anyone interested in donating to an outstanding humanitarian aid program she suggests GAIA - the Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance organization.

Her reading other poems:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF4mdBHxrfA

*************
:hi:

RL

[miss_american_pie]

1. ...

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

4. ...

:hi:

RL

[miss_american_pie]

2. oops

Making up for lost time... ;)

[RetroLounge]

5. You're just out of practice

:D

RL

[miss_american_pie]

7. I'm just distracted

The girl at the next table is bitching about the cream cheese. Loudly.

Seriously, who does that?

[RetroLounge]

8. Bitching about Cream Cheese?

What? It's not white enough for her?

:eyes:

RL

[miss_american_pie]

9. It's whipped

She's a twit.

[RetroLounge]

14. Yinz

eom

RL

[Haole Girl]

3. Some women learn the art of betrayal at a very young age

I suppose men do, too.

That is the kind of poem I want to read more than once.

[RetroLounge]

6. ...

:hi:

RL

[Tuesday Afternoon]

10. ~

:donut: :hi:

[RetroLounge]

11. Good Morning!

:hi:

RL

[Chorophyll]

12. ...

But what will you post on Good Friday? ;)

[RetroLounge]

13. A Halloween Poem?

:9

:hi:

RL

[Chorophyll]

15. Appropriate!

Good Friday is pretty creepy... :hi:

[RetroLounge]

16. Yeah, but the costumes are cool

:D

RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

17. My dear Retro!

Ouch!

This one bites!

I had trouble reading it, because of that...

VERY evocative...

Thanks!

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

18. ...

:hi:

RL

[BlueIris]

19. Nice pick! Good for a Sunday. nt

[RetroLounge]

20. ...

:D

:hi:

RL